The People’s Republic of China (PRC) gave 3,000 metric tons of Tibet’s glacial water to the island nation of the Maldives in two batches in March and May 2024 — the same months it announced and imposed water conservation regulations in Tibet.
The PRC’s State Council issued the new rules a week before the first delivery of 1,500 metric tons of water in jugs to the Maldives, where the freshwater supply is affected by erratic rainfall and rising sea levels.
The regulations took effect weeks before the second batch of water jugs were sent to the Indian Ocean nation, which is about 3,400 kilometers from the Tibetan plateau.
“I have heard that China is donating bottled water from Tibet to other parts of the world for free for political gain,” one Tibetan said. “However, in Tibet, the local Tibetans do not have enough drinking water. At times there isn’t enough water to even brush our teeth.”
The Maldives has borrowed more than $1 billion from Chinese banks in the past decade under Beijing’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure scheme, according to analysts.
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu signed 20 agreements, including for financial and military assistance, with Beijing during his inaugural state visit to China in January 2024.
Tibetans said they face water shortages because Chinese authorities have implemented systematic water conservation and management campaigns across villages and towns for over a decade. Tibetans have lived under Chinese Communist Party rule since the People’s Liberation Army invaded and occupied their homeland in the early 1950s.
The same day the Maldives said it received the first batch of water, officials in Tibet’s Ngari prefecture, the source of key South Asian rivers, began a series of yearlong events to promote water conservation.
Meanwhile, Tibetans are being forced to relocate from their ancestral land in Gangkar township to make way for the expansion of Chinese water bottling facilities, sources said.
“Gangkar is known for its fertile pastureland and significant water resources from glaciers with 15 water springs in the region, which the local Tibetans have always relied on for their livelihoods,” one source said.
Chinese authorities plan to move about 430 residents to take control of the water resources, he said.
Beijing’s moves signal it is engaging in “water politics” for geopolitical gains in South Asia, experts said.
The PRC has projects to extract mineral-rich water to expand its bottled water industry, they said. It also wants to control water flows to lower riparian states such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam to further its aspiration of regional dominance.
“The imperative to address the threat of China weaponizing water in Tibet cannot be overstated,” scholars Neeraj Singh Manhas and Dr. Rahul M. Lad wrote in the report “China’s Weaponization of Water in Tibet: A Lesson for the Lower Riparian States,” published in March 2024 in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.
With about 87,000 dams built, the PRC poses a historic threat, having already dammed most internal rivers, they wrote.
Tibet is at the forefront of Beijing’s regional “water wars,” said Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution, a public policy think tank in India.
Tibet’s eight major transboundary river systems have the capacity to turn the PRC into “Asia’s water hegemon,” given that their water could be used for domestic economic and foreign policy-related interests, as well as be weaponized to harm lower riparian states, she said.
“In that light, China’s moves vis-à-vis export of water to Maldives cannot be isolated from the larger approach China is adopting to using Tibet’s water resources,” she added.
